All That Matters

By the time Jack and Sebastian left after dinner, I was a little less upset with the nature of their choices in the week surrounding my wedding. It wasn’t to say that I was pleased with it, but I’d managed to put it all in perspective. No one had died. Nothing had been destroyed. No one got so drunk that they did something dumb enough to wind up in police custody. As far as I was aware, Nicole hadn’t gotten pregnant; it was another one night stand that she’d survived with no damage. And my dearest friend had even managed to make a connection with someone who wasn’t at all his type. If I remembered correctly, the DJ who was based out of Cape Breton had been sporting a fauxhawk and knuckle tattoos which made him an unlikely partner for the very picky Sebastian.

The thought, though they had made out in the coat closet during my reception, made me happy.

“I can’t believe he didn’t call,” Sidney muttered as he rinsed the dishes.

I stopped in my work of wiping the counters down as we cleaned up together. “Maybe she didn’t want him to call.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know Nicole all that well—“

“Jack clearly does,” he muttered. “Calling her ‘Nic.’”

“He might think he does, but he’s probably wrong about that.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Nicole legitimately hates men. She wants to live in a completely female society that only utilizes men for mating and maybe to open a few of the more difficult pickle jars.”

Sidney looked surprised as I took a deep breath and finished cleaning the counter before moving towards the island, sponge still in my hand.

“I’ve known her since I was eighteen and she has never been in a relationship. She’s actually never accepted a second date with anyone. Wait. I take that back. She’s been on one second date and that was only because he had tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert while we were in college and she had fantasies about seducing Timberlake from the audience.

“Her sex life has consisted of an endless series of one-night-stands that began her senior year of high school and haven’t yet ended. All of them have been with blond men who were at least marginally attractive, like Jack. She’s given most of them phony numbers and half of them fake names. I can think of at least three occasions where she gave them some variation of my name and my phone number.”

“Oh come on, that’s not true.”

“It is completely true. She ran into one at a bar a few weeks after they hooked up in her car and pretended to have amnesia.”

“Amnesia?”

“She looked at him and said, ‘Who are you?’ Then proceeded to look at me with panic in her eyes and yelled, ‘Who am I?’ and ran to the nearest exit. She stuck me with the bill and a confused frat boy who couldn’t quite figure out why Louise, the name she’d given him, didn’t recognize him.”

“You realize she’s completely out of control, right?”

“She has been for as long as I’ve known her. Are you sure you think Jack should call her?”

He chuckled. “Still, Jack’s a nice guy. He should have thought to call her.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not that simple with her. It may not have been the right choice, but she isn’t the type that holds it against anyone, even if she’s actually into them.”

He sighed and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher carefully before leading the way to our bedroom and settling into the bed next to me. They had an afternoon game the next day and he wasn’t one to stay awake late into the night when he had to be out the door earlier than usual.

I curled up against him enjoying his warmth for as long as I could before he slipped out in the morning to begin the very particular series of superstitions that got him through the days of games.

I rode to the arena with Nathalie, knowing that the plan was for the team and their wives to go to dinner as a group. Having my own car with me made no sense knowing that Sid knew the city better and one car would do just fine.

The signs weren’t as bad, fewer and further between. Perhaps they were there just as they had been before, but I was already getting better at ignoring it. Either way, it was a more pleasant experience with a group of women that were quickly becoming my friends.

Most of them anyway.

We joined the team for a late dinner, taking up the entire back room of one of the restaurants on the South Side. The long tables were rowdy; excited to have another big win under their belts even if it was only the preseason. It was still a strong start, something they’d be looking forward to all summer.

The mood was high and a few rounds of drinks and appetizers were making the idea of entrees obsolete. No one seemed to mind, content to spend time becoming reacquainted before the season was in full swing and there wasn’t time enough to do so.

Plans were made for an evening out at Diesel that I wanted no part of. I shook my head slowly, infinitesimally before Sidney could even suggest that we join them for the rest of the evening. He seemed to get the hint, not piping up about joining in on the fun.

But I was only off the hook for so long.

“We can’t go,” Vero said from somewhere down the table. I couldn’t see her face, but I could clearly hear the disappointment in her voice. “We have to send the sitter home by ten.”

I saw Pascal give an understanding nod. If you asked him why he’d stayed in Pittsburgh when he had other viable options, one of his reasons was always the fact that they had good babysitters. But that didn’t change the fact that many of them were still teenage girls with curfews. It was something that he was used to working around and one of the reasons he so seldom considered trips to the club that I despised.

It was still new territory for Marc and Veronique.

“Wish we could,” Marc added.

They hadn’t had much time since Estelle was born. It wasn’t that either of them regretted starting a family, it was something that they’d both wanted for a long time and had struggled with for a while, but they were clearly feeling cooped up. They adored their daughter, but they’d grown used to a certain lifestyle that no longer conformed to their situation.

Sometimes, they missed it.

Marc went out on his own once in a while in a way that many of his teammates did, but he never stayed long. He felt guilty leaving Vero at home with the baby while she felt guilty that he couldn’t spend time with his team in the ways that he once had.

Team dinners were the best they could do, and only when they could nail down a sitter that they trusted.

“We can take Estelle,” Sidney piped up.

The group became astoundingly quiet, the silence only broken when Brooks Orpik started laughing at the table next to us. I wasn’t sure of the look on my face, but I was certain that my expression didn’t quite match the one on Sidney’s face.

“We couldn’t ask you guys to do that,” Vero said.

She looked like she was on the verge of tears, as if no one had shown her so much as simple kindness in a very long time.

“You aren’t asking, we’re offering. There’s a difference.”

It seemed more like he was offering and I was sitting next to him looking perplexed about the whole thing.

“Besides, you guys had a crazy summer. You’ve earned a night off. We’ll keep her tonight and you guys can go have fun.”

He had a solid point, one that I certainly couldn’t deny. They hadn’t had an easy go of it during or after the playoffs. Flower had finally agreed to see a sports psychologist after several teammates urged him to look at it as an opportunity and not an admission of failure or weakness. Sidney, who was no stranger to it, though his adventures in therapy had been less public, had been among his supporters in making the decision.

“Really,” I spoke up. “We’ll take her. Go out, have a good time. And you can just come get her in the morning.”

I felt like I’d lost my mind, but Sidney had started it. I also had no interest in being the asshole who made her husband renege on an offer to babysit just moments after he’d made the offer in the first place.

They both looked gleeful, unsure of what to do with the freedom and before long they were on their way out the door with the two of us in tow. They simply couldn’t wait to send the sitter home, send us to Sewickley with Estelle and all of her belongings, and have an actual night out.

“You look nauseous,” Sidney commented as he drove towards Marc and Vero’s house in the suburbs.

“I am.”

“Are you getting sick?”

“No.”

“Morning sickness?”

I gave him a dark look out of the corner of my eye. “Still on the pill.”

“We need to talk about that.”

“Not right now we don’t.”

He rolled his eyes. “Then why are you nauseous.”

I turned slightly in my seat to face him, pulling my left leg up under my body. I adjusted the seatbelt so it wouldn’t dig into my skin and pushed myself back in the seat. The leather bucket seat enveloped me as a breeze rolled in through the open windows.

“I haven’t babysat since I was thirteen and I wasn’t all that good at it then.”

“I never have. Well, Taylor. But I guess she doesn’t actually count.”

“You know we have to return Estelle alive, correct?”

“Are you doubting our childcare abilities?”

“Yes. Yes I am.”

He laughed as he followed Marc’s little white sports car down into the cul-de-sac where they lived. “We’ll return her safe and sound. Besides, you’ve seen the kid. She’s an easy baby.”

Famous last words.

Marc rushed to pack all of Estelle’s belongings into the SUV, not wanting to give us enough time to change our minds and leave before he was finished.

I slipped into the back seat to help Vero secure the carseat as the babysitter bounced down the driveway with payment in hand.

“You really don’t have to do this, Wyn,” Vero murmured. “You can just plead insanity and run.”

“You guys deserve it. Sid and I were just going home anyway. Besides, I owe you.”

“Owe me?”

“You’ve been so good to me and I need to pay you back for that.”

She patted my hand. “It’s called friendship, Bronwyn. You don’t owe me anything.”

Estelle slept through the transfer, fast asleep until we got her settled in the portable crib that Sid had set up in the empty spare room.

Then all hell broke loose.

Estelle was an easy baby when you were her mother and father. She was a screamer when she woke up in a strange space staring up at the faces of two people she didn’t quite recognize.

I couldn’t blame the kid. In the same circumstances, I would have been freaked out as well.

She may as well have been kidnapped for all she knew.

We tried all of the tricks that Vero had listed off when we’d been packing her into our car.

Rocking didn’t work. Singing made it worse, in part because neither Sidney nor I could carry a tune in a bucket. Walking with her only seemed to keep her calm for a few minutes at a time. The tv and ceiling fan were nothing more than a waste of electricity.

She didn’t want her bottle and she spit her pacifier onto the floor several times. The diaper change turned out to be necessary, but she sounded like a wounded animal screaming for help until she was securely back in her pajamas and then the cries settled back into a dull roar.

I was developing a raging migraine, but Sidney was unfazed. He carried her and patted a gentle cadence on her back, doing what he could to soothe her. All the while, I was doing all that I could not to start crying in harmony with her.

It was late in the night when she finally fell into a deep sleep laying on Sidney’s chest as he lounged on the couch.

“Easy baby?” I asked through a pained yawn.

The rumble of his chest as he chuckled caused her to stir briefly. Her lips were pursed and cheeks flushed from her earlier trauma.

“Lesson learned,” he said softly. “But at least she’s sleeping now.”

“Until we try to move her.”

“So we won’t move her.”

“And just stay on the couch? All night?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Somewhere with the five hours of sleep I’ve already lost for the night.”

“You’re aware that we’re in our twenties, right?”

“You’re just as guilty of acting like an old person as I am. Plenty of sleep. Lots of water. No loud music. Always getting a healthy amount of fiber in your diet.”

He laughed again.

“Maybe it’s a sign.”

“Of?”

“That we’re made for something more like this.”

“Sitting on a couch at four in the morning with someone else’s child?”

“I was thinking of just supplying our own child.”

“Are you actually ready for that?”

He opened up his mouth to speak but I interrupted him.

“Think about it before you answer. Are you ready for the constant lack of sleep and inability to go out with your friends like the average twenty-six year old? We’re young, Sidney; and we just got married. I’m still trying to figure out how to successfully be your wife right now and I’m not sure that I’m ready to add being the mother of your children to my resume.”

“When will you be?”

“I don’t know. I can’t snap my fingers and magically be ready to be a mom. I feel like I’m just getting my stride here and I want to focus on work for a while. Maybe that isn’t what you want to hear, but that’s how I feel right now.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He could tell that I was holding back. He was watching me closely, taking in every nervous tick and bad habit. He knew all of my tells and every move that I made gave something away. I shifted uncomfortably as he kept his eyes on me.

“Well, maybe you’re right. If you can’t be completely honest with me then maybe we aren’t ready to be parents. But I feel like I am.”

“Oh, and you’re being completely honest with me?”

“You want honesty?”

“That’s what you’re asking of me. Of course I do.”

He kept his volume low, hyper-aware of the infant sleeping on his chest, but it didn’t make the sincerity in his voice ring any less true.

“On the list of things that I’ve always wanted out of life, nothing ever outweighed hockey. Since I was six it was my reason for getting out of bed every morning and I never believed than anything would be more important than that. As I got older, I realized that there were things that were just as important, but nothing ever outranked my sport.

“Then I met this amazing woman and I fell madly in love with her and it was like the world tilted on its axis and everything changed. There was nothing that I wanted more than having a future and a family with that woman. I knew that if I lost the sport, I would be okay because I had her. I knew that when my career was over, no matter when that happened or why, I would still have her and the family that I built with her. That future excites me.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

“Scared to death.” He shifted his weight slightly, his eyes boring into mine. “I was raised by a man who pushed me too hard because he didn’t have a father to push him. I don’t want to be like him and because of that, having boys actually scares me a lot. I don’t want to be the father that pushes so hard my kids leave as teenagers to get a little peace. I don’t want to pressure them to the point that they feel resentment towards me.

“I love my father, but I don’t want to be him. I’m afraid that I won’t be good at it, that I’ll go down that same path and make the choices that I’ve always sworn I wouldn’t. That worries me. But it doesn’t make me want it any less.”

“I’m afraid I’ll be a bad mom.”

My eyes were on my hands as I picked at my cuticles. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to get upset. I didn’t want to admit to Sidney that they idea of motherhood felt insurmountable and made me feel small and weak.

“I feel like I didn’t learn enough from my mom. I feel like there was so much I missed and I’m not prepared.”

“You had a phenomenal mother, Bronwyn. She died, yes. But she still guides you a decade later.”

“But I can’t call her when I get overwhelmed.”

“No, you can’t. You can always talk to her, see if that helps. But if you need someone to talk back, you have options. You can call my mom or Sebastian’s. You can call Nathalie and she will be over here in a flash with her bag of tricks to make everything run smoothly. Just because Melody Doyle isn’t here to lead you, doesn’t mean you don’t have help.

“And I happen to know that you will be a remarkable mother. You’re kind and empathetic. You take care of the people you love because you are nurturing by nature. There’s a learning curve, but I have more faith in you than I do in myself.”

I glanced at the baby sleeping soundly on his chest, sucking on her bottom lip as her eyelids fluttered under the influence of her dreams.

“I’m not nurturing.”

“Sure you are.”

“My first instinct was to run away from the squalling baby not to comfort her.”

“She’s not yours.”

“She’s not yours either, unless you’re keeping a very big secret from me.”

He cracked a playful smile.

“As a general rule, it’s safe to say that I am calmer than you. I’m used to high-pressure situations. Anyway, Taylor was colicky and I got used to the sound so it doesn’t rattle me.”

“I don’t know if I can be as calm as you.”

“Maybe you won’t be, but you’ll be perfectly capable of loving and caring for our children.”

It was tempting in that moment; the idea of ‘our’ children. But I knew that my emotions were being colored by the sight of my husband, treacherously handsome as he was, perfectly content and at ease with a baby dozing on his chest. I was thinking with my hormones, the act of which could be blamed for every shotgun wedding and episode of Teen Mom. I had to remain sensible.

“We aren’t ready,” I insisted.

“You aren’t,” he corrected. “Which is okay. But I’m not taking the blame for waiting when I really don’t want to wait at all.”

“But you will?”

“Well, I was planning on secretly replacing your pills with baby aspirin.”

“Not even remotely funny,” I said as he continued to grin at me.

“It was a little funny.”

“Not even.”

“Tiny bit.”

“Shut up,” I said through a yawn.

“Maybe you should go get some sleep. Marc and Vero will be here to get her in a few hours. You could still get in a solid nap.”

“No, I think we’ll just spend our Sunday in bed.”

“Really, honey. You can go to bed. I don’t mind.”

“If you can pull an all-nighter, then so can I.”

Truth was, I hadn’t pulled an all-nighter since college and I was a person who didn’t function well on a lack of sleep. I didn’t have to have eight hours, but it never hurt to get a solid six or seven. I was a more friendly and tolerant person when I slept.

Sleep also helped me look more like a human and less like a terrifying reptilian zombie creature from the depths of hell.

But I was bound and determined to stay awake. And somehow, I managed.

We let the subject change to conversations that carried no real meaning. They weren’t deep conversations, but they were comfortable discussions that functioned in keeping us awake.

He handed Estelle off for her morning bottle and she was hungry enough not to notice that she was in my arms. She didn’t scream as I walked her to the kitchen for her bottle and Sidney smiled and darted towards the bathroom for a moment.

She was a beautiful baby, dark eyes and olive complexion. Her eyelashes were remarkably long; likely to be both a blessing and curse when she got older. Marc would likely have to lock her up when the teenage boys started sniffing around. But he had years to worry about that.

“She likes you,” Sid said, sneaking up behind me.

His sweatpants were slung low on his hips. He’d discarded his t-shirt, likely because Estelle had spit up on it at least once over the course of the night. I didn’t mind the disheveled appearance she’d left on him over the course of the long night.

“She likes her formula.”

“No, I think she likes you. Babies always do.”

“Babies can’t like me. They’re like dogs, they can smell fear.”

“You just don’t notice it,” he said as he shook his head and turned on the coffeepot. “Everywhere we go, babies stare at you. There was a little boy in Whole Foods who spent the length of three aisles flirting mercilessly with you. Not that I can blame the kid.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Of course you didn’t. You were too busy being pissed off at me.”

He had a point.

I watched as he walked away to respond to the sudden ringing of the doorbell.

“You look like shit,” Marc said through a laugh.

“You would know, it’s how you look every day.”

Marc continued to laugh.

“I’ll go get her stuff,” Sid said. “The girls are in the kitchen.”

I heard him clap his friend on the back before taking the stairs two at a time.

“How’d it go?” Marc asked as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

“There was an adjustment period.”

“Get any sleep?”

I shook my head. “Could have, but I chose not to.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked with a wink. “Decided to work on making one of your own?”

I blushed as he took Estelle from my arms and proceeded to burp her. He was becoming a seasoned pro at it.

“We decided not to, actually.”

“Was it that bad?”

“No. I’m just not ready yet.”

“Sid is.”

“I know. I think he was born ready though.”

“Nah, just since you came along.”

“He actually talks about it?”

“Once in a while,” he said with a shrug. “You’ll get there.”

“Get where?” Sidney asked from the base of the stairs as he arranged Estelle’s things into a pile.

“Primanti Brothers. Can you believe she hasn’t been there?’”

“She’s not a fan of sandwiches.”

“Maybe I’ll try it just to shut you up, Flower.”

I smiled and he winked. Our conversation was just between us, neither of us would give it away. We gathered Estelle’s accoutrement and headed for the driveway.

Marc settled Estelle back into my arms and even without food to offer her she seemed perfectly fine to be with me. It was a nice change from the earlier stages of our adventure when she’d acted as if I’d done something to offend her.

Marc had set to transferring the carseat back into the SUV that I was much more accustomed to seeing Vero drive.

“How was Diesel?” Sidney asked as he attempted to arrange the supplies into the vehicle in a way that made some amount of sense.

“Good,” Marc replied with a half-smile.

Sid stood and peered around the car at his friend. “Did you even go?”

“For a little while.”

“Marc…”

“We made it half-way there and then turned around. It’s just we realized we had the house to ourselves and the chance to get a full night of sleep. That hasn’t happened in months. We couldn’t resist.”

“It’s fine, dude,” Sidney said through a chuckle. “I probably would’ve done the same damn thing.”

“What do we owe you?”

Sidney burst into a laugh, the full sound of his voice bouncing off the nearby houses and echoing back towards us in the cool morning air. The sound startled the baby as I settled her in her carseat and I attempted not to laugh along with my husband.

“I’m serious.”

“Go home, Flower. You don’t owe us anything.”

“And if my wife insists?” he asked as I stepped away from the car and shut the door.

“Just tell her that it’s called friendship and that you guys don’t owe us anything,” I replied. “She was a joy.”

“When she stopped screaming.”

Marc chuckled. “You coming to practice?”

Sid shook his head slowly. “I think I’m going to stay in bed all day. I only made the coffee for your benefit.”

“You won’t be the only one who sits this one out.”

“You got a full eight hours, what do you know?”

“Closer to seven, but I’ll be there. It just sounded like Geno and Nealer got rowdy last night. I don’t know if they’ll be around.”

“How do you know?”

“Check your phone, I got three drunk texts. All in Russian. I think it’s Russian.”

“So sorry I missed it,” Sidney quipped as Marc got settled in the car.

“Thanks again, man.”

Sidney smiled and waved the goalie away. It was his way of saying it wasn’t a big deal, that it was the least he could do. And really, it was. Marc and Vero were consistently loyal to us and spending a sleepless night with their daughter was a small gesture compared to the support they showed us and had always shown him.

Sidney pulled me back into the house and we collapsed into the bed that we hadn’t so much as touched over the course of the night. He leaned against the headboard, the TV playing in the background as I curled up against his side. He pulled me close, his arm around me as we rested quietly.

“I’m sorry, Sidney.”

He looked down towards me, clearly confused as to why I was apologizing.

“For?”

“I know you want kids.”

“We’ll get there. It’s okay that you’re not ready. I’m not going to push it. And frankly, maybe you’re right. This is good, we’re good. When we’re ready to have kids we will.”

“How are we going to know?”

“We just will. And just because we aren’t going to try right now, that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it once in a while, figure out where we stand.”

I nodded, my head against his shoulder as he ran his fingers up and down the length of my arm.

“It’s really okay. I don’t want you to feel bad. You’re not dropping a bomb and saying you don’t want kids at all. That might be a problem. We’ve got plenty of time.”

We settled in and dozed off and on over the course of the day. We got out of bed to eat a few times but always wound up back in bed. Our normal schedule only returned when he rolled out of bed on Monday to prepare for the Blackhawks game.

He would be one of the first at Consol. He’d roll in just a few minutes after Pascal, hours before some of his teammates. He’d settle into his routines, never deviating. He wouldn’t speak to his mother or his sister and given the fact that Troy was still less than pleased with his son, he wouldn’t talk to his father either.

We’d talk in the early afternoon as he continued the process of settling into his groove. He would teasingly check to make sure I was still going to be there to watch him play. As always I would joke that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to be there but that I’d be sure to keep up from home.

It was all a farce. I had long since decided that I wouldn’t avoid home games. It all went back to the idea that I had an example to set for other wives and girlfriends. I wasn’t a fan of feeling like I was a role model, but it was only fair that I was present for games in the way others were expected to be.

Besides, since the fans knew I existed, they would expect me to be there and if I wasn’t, they would gladly formulate ridiculous reasons as to why I wasn’t there to support him. Some of them were obsessed with the wives in the way they were with the team itself. Sometimes, their desire to be hockey wives, made their behavior even more off the wall.

I sat with Vero and Carole-Lyne and it seemed that we were developing a habit of doing so. The others seemed to circulate, but the three of us remained stationary more often than not. I hadn’t thought that it would be something I would get used to, but it was quickly happening. It was a part of my life that I hadn’t ever predicted. I didn’t think that I would find myself tucked away at every Penguins home game, a camera on me every few minutes just to see if I was doing anything interesting. It wasn’t something that would have ever occurred to me.

But then again, having Sidney had never occurred to me. I hadn’t even been sure what I wanted out of life; whether I wanted to get married and have children. That hadn’t been a part of my life or thought process until I fell in love with Sidney and it was now a part of my life.

And frankly, my life as a hockey wife was just beginning.